Skip to content
growing.guide
Menu

Symptom

Holes or tunnels in fruit

Holes in fruit are the work of animals: slugs hollowing strawberries, caterpillars boring into tomatoes and cobs, fruit flies and moths laying eggs, birds pecking.

Cut the fruit open. Maggots or caterpillars inside point to insects; shallow hollows at ground level to slugs; beak marks to birds.

Likely causes

Ordered from the usual answer to the less likely one. Each links to the full problem.

Recorded on Strawberries

  1. A slug on a holed lettuce Pest Common

    Slugs and snails

    Hollowed strawberries and low fruit, with slime.
  2. Brassica plants pecked down to bare stalks by birds Pest Common

    Birds

    Pecked fruit, especially berries and cherries.
  3. Ripe raspberries collapsing from fruit fly damage Pest Common

    Fruit flies

    Soft berries with tiny maggots.

Less likely on Strawberries

  1. A green caterpillar on a holed cabbage leaf Pest Possible

    Caterpillars

    Holes with droppings, into tomatoes, cobs and pods.
  2. Raspberries with dry, greyish patches near the stalk Pest Possible

    Raspberry beetle

    Grubs at the stalk end of raspberries.
  3. A cut feijoa with brown, tunnelled flesh Pest Less likely

    Guava moth

    Tunnelled feijoas and guavas.